New York, NY, March 3, 2008—Rodale Inc. announced the appointment of Karen Rinaldi as SVP, General Manager and Publishing Director, Rodale Books, effective April 1. In this newly created position, Rinaldi will oversee editorial and publishing for all of Rodale’s books. She will report to Rodale President and CEO Steven Pleshette Murphy.

“We are delighted to have Karen join the Rodale team. She’s a talented editor and an innovative marketer with extremely high standards and exceptional taste,” said Murphy. “Karen will work with our Rodale talent and help bring new writers into the fold. She will drive our strategy of publishing smart books by great authors, and, in some cases, developing brands around them, as we continue to publish books on the subjects that matter to our readers.”

Trade distribution and marketing will be part of Rinaldi’s group, and she will also collaborate with Rodale Direct EVP Gregg Michaelson, looking at innovative ways to make Rodale’s titles available across all of the many platforms—trade, mail, online, international—at the company’s disposal.

Rinaldi was previously at Bloomsbury USA, where she was Publisher and Managing Director for the last nine years. She led the entire division, including editorial, sales, marketing, and production and oversaw the publication of 230 front list and 100 backlist titles per year. Under her leadership, Bloomsbury has published some of the most notable books of the past decade, including Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, My Last Supper by Melanie Dunea, Schott’s Original Miscellany by Ben Schott and subsequent books in the series, How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard, and Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert.

Before Bloomsbury, Rinaldi was a Senior Editor at Random House, where her authors included Michael Moore, Stanley Bing, and Mark Leyner. She was also a features editor at Details magazine and an editor at Turtle Bay Books, formerly a Random House imprint.

“I am thrilled to be joining Rodale, especially at this moment. Rodale is uniquely positioned to sell books across various channels and has access to multiple streams of content. These factors, combined with Rodale’s credo of publishing content for better living, provide a rich environment for writers to reach as many readers as possible. As my own interests veer toward issues of how we live, I am excited to bring my two decades of experience working closely with authors to a new arena, and I welcome the challenge of building on the strong foundation of Rodale?s extraordinary resources.”